A politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.

The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,--in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,--often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.

We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.

Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps.

Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.

The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.

Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.